One-stop trough: how much do Irish politicians get paid? (Part 1 of 3)

“The One Stop Shop is an information service for all Members relating to salary and allowances. The office also assists Members to access any other Houses of the Oireachtas office service. It is located on the ground floor, room C 2.60 of Leinster House 2000. Office hours are 9.45am to 6pm Monday to Thursday and 5.45pm on Friday. The office is also open during lunchtimes on sitting days. The telephone number is 01 618 4693.” Introduction to the Oireachtas One Stop Shop – our politicians need a dedicated service given the depth and range of salary and allowances to which they are entitled

Let’s start off with a joke. In the Dail (Irish parliament) there is a so-called whip system whereby a politician from each political party is appointed to the post of whip to that party, and their job is to ensure party members turn up at work, that they vote in accordance with the leadership’s wishes and that party members are disciplined. A special additional salary payment is made to the party whip. The Socialist Party has two elected Teachta Dala (TDs, or deputies) – Clare Daly and Joe Higgins. One of them – I’m not sure which, because presumably they are too ashamed to publicly declare it – is entitled to receive a special additional salary payment of €6,000 per annum to be the Socialist Party whip! Cue the punch-line drum roll! Except it’s not a joke, and by the time you finish this blogpost on political pay and allowances in Ireland, you will not be laughing.

This country is bankrupt with an annual deficit of €15bn, in other words we need borrow €300m a week just to keep the country going. We are being bailed out by the IMF and others. We are steadily travelling in a trajectory that will see a debt:GDP of nearly 120% next year or 140%-plus of GNP, or according to most economists, on the border if not having exceeded sustainable levels. We have €3.8bn of new taxes and cuts to services in 2012, next year we will have an additional adjustment of €3.5bn, in 2014 it will be €3.1bn and in 2015 it will be €2bn, and these cuts will be cumulative, so that by 2015 – and in comparison with 2011 – there will be an annual adjustment of €12.4bn. If you think a €100 household charge here, a €5 septic tank registration fee there, a cut to emergency payments or the deterioration in public services after this month’s early retirements are anything, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This entry is part one of a two part blogpost examining the salaries, allowances, benefits, perks and entitlements paid to our politicians in our bankrupt country. Part One details most of the financial rewards on offer and is largely derived from Oireachtas inhouse publications, particularly the One Stop Shop and The Members Termination and Pension Entitlements guide as well as responses to parliamentary questions. The delightfully-named “One Stop Shop” is an internal Oireachtas department that helps politicians understand the various components to their salaries and entitlements. You might think its guide set out all the goodies on offer, but it doesn’t and this blogpost has also rooted out other benefits from other sources and has identified other goodies which will be described in Part Two which will be published next Sunday and focuses on the damage done to society and the economy by our gobsmackingly overpaid politicians and expensive political system.

There are three aims of this blogpost (1) to highlight the rewards on offer to politicians in our bankrupt country – these rewards are salary, additional office payments, unvouched allowances, pension, perks and allowances for expenditure which give rise to potential for personal income eg being paid up to €1.14 per mile as a car allowance and (2) to highlight the cost of our political system, some of the expenses described below will be vouched so the politician doesn’t make a personal profit; nonetheless the country must bear the cost and (3) highlight the potential for chicanery with politicians employing, or buying goods from, family members, and the absence of any oversight on political performance.

Just to recap we have 166 TDs in the Dail, 75 FG, 35 Labour, 19 FF, 14 SF, 2 Socialist Party, 2 People before Profit, 1 Workers and Unemployed Action Group and 18 independents (including 4 independents who had previously lost the party whip). We have one TD per 27,500 men, women, children. In addition we have 60 senators in the Seanad, 20 FG, 14 FF, 12 Labour, 3 SF and 11 independents.

Dail
Basic TD: €92,672 a year, that is, €7,722 a month or €1,782 per week. The recent history of the basic salary is shown in this Oireachtas written response by the late Brian Lenihan.

Whips
The office of “whip” is supposed to maintain party discipline, ensure members turn up to vote and ensure members vote in line with the party leadership.
Chief Whip (Paul Kehoe): no payment specified in One Stop Shop
Assistant Government Whip (Emmet Stagg): €15,000
Whip to Labour Party (Emmet Stagg): no payment specified in One Stop Shop
Asst Whip to Fine Gael (Joe Carey): €7,500
Asst Whip to Labour (John Lyons): €6,000
Whip to Fianna Fail (Sean O’Fearghail): €19,000
Asst Whip to Fianna Fail (John Browne): €9,500
Whip to Sinn Fein (Aengus Ó Snodaigh): €6,000
Asst Whip to Sinn Fein (Jonathan O’Brien): €3,000
Whip to Socialist Party (): €6,000
Whip to People Before Profit (): €6,000

The additional salary above is added to the basic salary, so for example, An Taoiseach receives €200,000 per annum comprising a TDs salary of €92,672 plus An Taoiseach’s additional salary payment of €107,328.

Seanad
Senators: €65,621 a year, that is, €5,468 a month or €1,262 per week

Dail and SeanadPension
TDs and senators contribute 6% of their salary a year for up to a maximum of 20 years in order to benefit from the Dail pension scheme. The scheme has different conditions depending on whether or not you joined before 2004. There are payments due to the politician under the scheme and to widow(ers) and children in the case of death. It is a final salary scheme which allows for a maximum of ½ the final salary to be paid for life from aged 65 – 1/40th of final salary is accrued for each year of service. It provides for a lump sum upon retirement and it is possible to take early retirement from age 50. It is hoped that in part two of this blogpost, there will be an estimate of how much the Oireachtas scheme would cost an employee an employee to buy in a private company.

AllowancesTravel and Accommodation: €12,000-€37,850 per annum depending on distance from the Leinster House. Senators get paid €7,000-€32,850 per annum and so-called “office holders” get paid €8,400-€36,150 per annum
Public Representation Allowance: €15,000 for TDs (no evidence of expenditure required – unvouched) or up to €25,700 (supported by invoices and receipts – vouched); Ministers €12,000 (unvouched) to €20,000 (vouched); Senators €9,250 (unvouched) to €15,000 (vouched)Dual Abode allowance: This applies to ministers only and allows Ministers to claim tax deductions on mortgages, rental or hotel accommodation PLUS tax deductions for maintaining property and other expenses which can be up to €6,500 UNVOUCHED. According to Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan “a tax deduction can be claimed in respect of the amount of the annual interest actually paid on any loan taken out to purchase the second residence. In addition, Ministers can claim a deduction for the actual vouched costs expended in maintaining the second residence. Examples of maintenance costs in such circumstances are lighting, heating, repairs and insurance. As an alternative to vouched maintenance expenses, a tax deduction may be claimed on an amount of €6,500 per annum.” And “If the second residence is rented accommodation, Ministers can claim for the actual cost of renting the accommodation (i.e. the annual rent). In addition, Ministers can claim a tax deduction for the actual vouched costs expended in maintaining the second residence. Examples of maintenance costs in such circumstances are lighting, heating and insurance of contents. As an alternative to vouched expenses, a tax deduction may be claimed on an amount of €4,500 per annum” and “If Ministers use hotel or guesthouse accommodation as a second residence, they can claim for the actual cost of room rental (i.e. the annual hotel/guest house bill excluding meals, etc). In addition, they can claim for the actual vouched additional costs associated with maintaining a second residence in a hotel. Examples of maintenance costs in such circumstances are laundry, etc. As an alternative to vouched expenses, a tax deduction may be claimed on an amount of €3,500 per annum.”

Independents allowance^
This is reported to be €41,152 per annum each for the 18 independent TDs (Stephen Donnelly, Luke Flanagan, Mick Wallace, Shane Ross, Thomas Pringle, Michael Healy-Rae, Michael Lowry, Finian McGrath, Mattie McGrath, Tom Fleming, Noel Grealish, John Halligan, Catherine Murphy, Maureen O’Sullivan PLUS four TDs who have had the party whip removed Tommy Broughan, Willie Penrose, Denis Naughten and Patrick Nulty ); it has been suggested that loss of a party whip doesn’t automatically give an entitlement to an independent’s allowance, and that a member must be elected as an independent before becoming entitled to that allowance.

Termination payments
Last November 2011, Minister for Housing Willie Penrose is reported to have been paid a termination payment when he resigned his ministerial post following a dispute over the closing of a military barracks in his constituency. The payment was reported to have totalled €30,000. Minister Penrose had been in the ministerial post for eight months. I can’t find anything in the One Stop Shop on this termination payment.
However the pensions guide does set out termination payments for ordinary TDs and senators. You get a lump sum upon termination PLUS a monthly payment for up to a year. As long as you have at least six months service in either the Dail or Seanad, you get a termination payment of two months salary. The monthly payment depends on how many years you’ve been a TD or senator eg for five years, you get three months at 75% of your salary. If you have over 14 years service, then you’d be entitled to 6 months at 75% of salary plus the following six months at 50% of salary.

Anything else?Mileage allowances for ministers of up to €1.14 per mile for cars of 2001cc and above for the first 4,000 miles. Not bad compensation for losing ministerial cars and drivers which, incidentally, are still provided to An Taoiseach, An Tanaiste and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence.

Each minister and minister of state, except An Taoiseach, An Tanaiste and justice minister, is entitled to recruit two drivers apiece at a cost which is charged to each department.
When ministers spend the night in a hotel, they can get reimbursed for the cost of the hotel PLUS 15% as a service charge – movies and laundry I guess – plus €72.66 for subsistence – those mini-bars are bandits!
When any members attend certain so-called “parliamentary assemblies” eg the OSCE, they can claim hotel expenses, a subsistence allowance plus up to 80% of the allowance for “casual entertaining”
A Parliamentary Assistant
Up to €41,092 per TD for secretarial assistance, PR, IT and training
€8,000 per TD to set up and kit out a constituency office
Free parking in central Dublin
Gym
Subsidised restaurant
Private Members bar at Leinster House with subsidised drinks
Free tax advice service
Free language lessons
Postage – 1,500 free postage items per month for TDs and 1,000 for senators
Free toner cartridges up to a maximum value of €2,000 annually (reporting suggests this was introduced after Sinn Fein’s Aengus O’Snodaigh had been requesting 2-3 toner cartridges per day at a cost of about €130 each)
Free unlimited fixed line telephone calls
Max of €750 every 18 months to buy a new mobile phone
Dail office and conference room facilities
VHI Group scheme (this is paid for)
Automobile Association group scheme (eg €46 for Home Start)
Insurance (eg Contents cover for constituency office €51.50)
Personal Accident (prices not available) and death insurance (costs €60-90 per month)

Keeping it in the family
In Northern Ireland, it is a requirement of membership of the Assembly that members report any payments made to family members. So if a politician employs their spouse as an assistant, that is reported and made public. We don’t have any such reporting requirement in our republic. But surely our media would have exposed such practices if they were widespread. Surely there can’t be an army of underqualified, underworked €41k a year parliamentary assistants or secretaries who happen to be wives, husbands and close family members given sweetheart jobs?

The lights are on, but is there anyone homeMichael Lowry, the controversial independent TD from Tipperary has been assigned to seat B28 in the Dail, that’s beside Mattie McGrath and Michael Healy-Rae on the front bench to the right of the speaker. Has anyone seen Michael in that seat since his speech last year in response to the Moriarty Tribunal? Of course you don’t need to be in the Dail chamber itself to observe what’s going on, and you can submit written questions. But in order to speak in debates you have to be there, they don’t do Skype yet! Maybe he’s just been coincidentally absent whenever I’ve viewed proceedings. And of course he may be performing other tasks for constituents, making phone calls, writing letters or he may be in meetings. He’s not a member of any Oireachtas committees but he does submit the odd written question. According to the Leinster House record of attendance, he has been present in the building for all 101 days in the period Feb-Dec 2011. His website does show some of his activities and he says he does write to ministers directly. His website shows him “calling for” lots of things, but it is unclear how exactly he does “call”.

In order to be present in the building, you have to tap your key fob against one of the terminals located around Leinster House, pictured below. You can also sign in at the One Stop Shop and should you do neither you can still retrospectively claim attendance if you can prove you booked a room or can show you were in the Dail, for example on video playback.

Part One today has been about stenography, recording what our politicians are paid. Part Two will examine the context of these salaries and costs.

* Not known. This is paid out of funding provided by the State to political parties. In 2010 the leader and deputy leader of the Labour party are reported to have received a combined total of €22,100. It is not clear what payments are made today to the leaders and deputy leaders of opposition parties.

^ In addition to directly paid allowances, political parties receive State funding and reporting on the use of such funding shows that it is used by political parties for rent, travel and subsistence, meetings, entertainment, telephone costs. The Labour party is reported to have received €14.5m between 2004-2010, an average of over €2m a year Some of these expenses may be claimed by politicians.

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73 Responses

Well done again, its so depressing. But there is now much worse, we mustn’t forget the politicians best friends, the civil servants!! Perhaps you would like to reveal that overpaid bunchs’ remittances to your wider audience and we must not forget that the civil service effectively is much bigger today than it was 4 years ago. Yes notwithstanding those lucky blighters who are now leaving! Dont forget that the state now owns a number of very large and some would argue overstaffed banks and lets not forget our very own so called developers. They are all now effectively public servants, some of these chaps are of course paid in excess of 200,000 pa for getting us into this mess. I give up and plan and staying away for another 20 years in the hope that Ireland sees sense and we rejoin our neighbours in Sterling and have to submit ourselves to their more developed sense of governance. Keep up the good work but I am afraid that no one really understands or seems to know what to do to break the spell of the golden circle.

Yup you are right, but I would like to hear what extent of previously private sector people are now being paid by taxpayers and how much. A lot of these clowns have very substantial independent means, i.e. cash in the bank somewhere, that is a scandalous situation.

I think that the title should have been “One-stop trough”. You haven’t mentioned the other “shops” laden with sweeties for local authority members.

Looking forward to part 2 (with great trepidation).

You did well to get all this info. About five years ago I sought info on TD remuneration off the Oireachtas website and had to write in and eventually got a Word document with some data. It was like pulling teeth and I was assured at the time that the website would be updated to make such info more accessible. Unless I’m mistaken, this still hasn’t been done.

Compare the Oireachtas’s (absence of) transparency on pay with that of Westminster at

OK, I know that the Mother of Parliments has had its own problems but at least MPs in trouble do resign and are pursued by the law.

As an aside, a MP currently earns the equivalent of €79,202 vs €92,672. Are our TDs really worth 17% more?

Back in 2005, I wrote on my blog that “It is noteworthy that UK MPs are paid about the same as TDs notwithstanding that MPs have much larger effective constituencies (66,000 versus 18,000) and that their Parliament meets for many more days a year (150+ versus 90+) and sits for proportionately more hours than the Dail.”

I don’t think much has changed since then aside from the half-hearted Friday sittings and, of course, TD salaries outpacing those of their UK counterparts.

@Brian/Conan, part one is just the product of research and as far as I know this is the first time that the One Stop Shop and pensions guide has made it into the public domain. There’s not a lot of context given in the blogpost save the over-arching fact that the country is bankrupt and facing into dreadful austerity. Part two will have context, and a few surprises!

You say “the country is bankrupt and facing into dreadful austerity”. I don’t think most people realise just how bad the outlook is barring a takeover of the country by China (big hint to our VIP) or a massive oil find off Dalkey (if pigs could fly).

Too many people (still) have their noses so deeply in the trough looking at their €xxx per hour, €xxx,xxxx per year and mega pensions that they cannot see the approaching storm of anger, destruction, despair, paralysis and loss of all things good. I can readily see us celebrating 2016 in a very different way to what the “establishment” expects.

Can I add to the foregoing by discussing the cost effectiveness of TDs in crude terms based simply on salaries, constituents and sitting days. A TD’s salary is equivalent to €5.2 per constituent per year whereas a MP’s salary is €1.2 per constituent p.a. Just to clarify, I arrived at the effective size of Dail constituencies by simply dividing the electorate by number of TDs.

If we assume the Dail sits for 110 days a year and ignore the fact that Westminster sits for longer hours, then a TD’s salary is equivalent to €842 per sitting day as compared with €528 for an MP.

It’s depressing to read just how deep TDs snouts are into the trough. No wonder they don’t seem to realise just how much trouble the country is in. These people are living like third world oligarchs, all while the public exchequer they run is bleeding out.

Gym
Subsidised restaurantPrivate Members bar at Leinster House with subsidised drinksFree tax advice service
Free language lessons
Postage – 1,500 free postage items per month for TDs and 1,000 for senators
Free unlimited fixed line telephone calls
Max of €750 every 18 months to buy a new mobile phone
Dail office and conference room facilitiesVHI Group scheme (this is paid for)
Automobile Association group scheme (eg €46 for Home Start)

Personally, at this stage, I don’t think TDs should be paid at all. Not until the country is back in surplus. I bet that would get them moving on correcting the public finances. They’re not going to feel much pressure with the way their getting pampered right now.

A more realistic proposal would be for TDs to be paid the average industrial wage and not a penny more. No expenses, no allowances, no perks, nothing until the exchequer is in a surplus.

The most disappointing part of all this is the total lack of leadership. This country needs to start living within its means and people won’t accept any more austerity without being lead from the front. I’m worried about what will happen if there’s no such leadership when the country has to default.

A technocrat government of 7 or 8 should be set in place(prominent people have offered free of charge).

Present Dáil & Senate should be stepped down. All salaries to politicians and senators stopped. All state pensions to be reduced to old age pension until we are back to surplus.
All salaries should be capped at €80,000.
No more payments to banks and bondholders.

No PPS numbers should be issued to anyone unless they are Irish OR can prove they have guaranteed full time employment.

Allow wind energy all along the west coast with interlinks to Britain…..the British are willing to buy it. This will also provide employment and a cheaper form of power which will help entice foreign direct investment, and lower rates of electricity will reduce living costs. The infrastructure created will benefit the tourism industry as well.

Borrowing to repay borrowing is a Ponzi scheme, and that’s what the current
government are doing!

@Jim, on the PPS number matter, you’ll find that Irish people are the main beneficiaries of being able to travel to other EU countries, and in any event our membership of the EU provides for free movement of goods and labour.

I am not the best positioned, but someone like, oh I dunno NWL, should do a similar piece on political dynasty as it relates to Ireland’s performance.
About twenty years ago, two about twenty odd year old dynasty kids entered the Dail. Twenty odd years later….Troika… the two dynasty kids, Taoiseach and Tainiste on that day.
For all the volumes that have been written, I think this is under shouted about.

At this stage, I wouldn’t care if Dail seats were actually inherited if at least the TDs were doing a good job. As it is, incompetence is still the worst form of corruption, and the country is paying for incompetence far more than for cronyism and nepotism.

If the Irish oligarchs and their lackey stooges “running” the country had one iota of your extraordinary ability to painstakingly and honestly document the current ruinous and totally untenable death spiral then just maybe Ireland would have a chance at redemption. But, no, you can be sure the unfettered pigs will never bother to lift their snouts from the bottomless trough. Until it is no more.

You may have unleashed powerful forces here NWL. This is arguably the most important piece of investigative journalism to be printed since the crisis began. I wonder what all those full-time journalists on the staff of the newspaper and TV outlets have been doing the past few years. It will be interesting to see who picks up on it in the days ahead. The promise of more revelations next week is also guaranteed to invite attention.

What was personally surprising to me was the amount of money all those Senators are getting. I’m feeling very stupid now for having voluntarily canvassed for a Senator on the TCD panel some years back.

As a consequence of the combined efforts of you and Brian in coming up with a brilliant title ‘One-stop trough’ I can see this becoming a defining slogan in public discourse for many years to come.

@Bunbury ” I wonder what all those full-time journalists on the staff of the newspaper and TV outlets have been doing the past few years.” I get the impression that most political journalists in Ireland still cling to an era when tales of sexual peccadillos, conflicts of interest, political intrigue/backstabbing/heaves were the stories of the day. And lest journalists upset their sources, they refrain from publicising pay and conditions and other inconvenient truths. That may be unfair, but in researching this blogpost, it was striking to me that in a bankrupt country in receipt of an IMF bailout, there has not been any detailed reporting on political pay and rewards generally.

Old media generally might want to wake up to the reality of the speed and openness with which previously hidden information can now come into the public domain, and ask themselves if the rewards on offer for ignoring inconvenient truths are worth the journalistic sacrifices.

The old ‘pol corrs’ don’t relish putting their sources on the spot. They like the carefully measured out ‘leaks’ and the chummy camaraderie of Leinster House. They dont’ care to report that the Dáil has descended into an unedifying sniggering chamber for fools who don’t take their work seriously. That era you refer to above was ushered in by John Healy a long time ago. Our quality newspapers still haven’t figured out that this kind of ‘access’ has been profoundly damaging to public discourse in Ireland.

So our politicians carry on as expected since they mostly learn their trade in County Council meetings where they jibe and snigger about things they have no power over, while they rack up expenses and junkets. Meanwhile the new tar on the roads gets thinner and thinner.

what they get paid might fade into the margins, might, if we considered a future partnership where our Chinese business partners used their resources to survey every inch of our sea bed with a view to sharing any oil gas that ‘might’ ‘might not’ arise, in a fair ratio, also we might consider ‘unilaterally’ increasing our cattle herd on a ‘needs must’ basis – regardless of methane, and become China’s baby milk powder supplier, right now job creation trumps methane, we do not have the luxury of living in the future just now, human rights in Ireland will deteriorate with economic stagnation, human rights begins at home,

The system of expenses is used to avoid a high headline salary figure which would outrage the public.

The last thing we need now is to discourage people further from entering politics by making the conditions worse for TDs. Of course TDs should face public scrutiny but is it right that we consider it normal to denigrate all of them and compare them to pigs? Being a full time politician can only be done at great personal cost. There is huge time and thus career sacrifice and risk to one’s personal relationships and family finances.

There is constant electoral risk in a system where you can be punished by the electorate for doing right and rewarded for doing wrong.

OMF wrote: “Personally, at this stage, I don’t think TDs should be paid at all”
This is the logical conclusion of this type of article.

Once we have unpaid TDs then we can revert to the time when only the idle rich – or the thoroughly corrupt -could afford to be representatives.

All parties find difficult in attracting good candidates to run for election.

Once we have unpaid TDs then we can revert to the time when only the idle rich – or the thoroughly corrupt -could afford to be representatives.

But that’s who we have right now.

All parties find difficult in attracting good candidates to run for election.

The trouble is, look at the kind of candidate these perks are attracting.

We can still get high quality TDs without having to pamper them. I’d argue that overly rewarding TDs attracts a less desirable form of candidate, too interested in personal rather than public good. Let us not have men about us who are fat.

NWL: congratulations on digging up the data and I look forward to reading next week’s edition.

However, the strength of this website is the fact-based analysis, not the “Outrage!!!” write up. I’m not sure that the switch to the Sindo-style headline “One Stop Trough” does you any favours. And, while I understand the need for completeness in terms of listing costs, some of these costs are to some extent unavoidable. Payments for travel need to be made if you are expecting people to travel and if no payment is allowed for two residences then only the wealthy will be able to be TDs in constituencies far from Dublin. It’s also far from clear that all expenses should be “vouched”, since that may require an army of people to check the vouching. When I worked in the US, all expenses for travel were ‘per diems’ without further detail, for this reason (of course you had to actually prove you went to the conference etc, but did not need to provide a clutch of receipts for coffee, lunch etc). Any discussion of e.g. cost-per-attendance/ cost-per-sitting of the Dail is populist and/or formalist nonsense and a little bizarre. Attendance in the Dail chamber is a tiny fraction of what being an elected politician is, or should be, about. Finally, it does not help to give the impression that addressing these sorts of costs have much to do with fixing Ireland’s financial position. On that question, anything which is not saving costs or increasing revenues of at least €100m/pa is scarcely worth talking about. The even less populist point is that ending Ireland’s massive undertaxation of average earners, not the Dail postage subsidy, is the crucial objective as far as serious efforts to restore Ireland’s fiscal position are concerned. See e.g.

From your list above my obvious thoughts: the pension contribution is far too low (do they pay the public service ‘pension levy’ too?), they should pay their own VHI, AA, and the cost of alcohol in that private members bar. The mileage should be ‘correct’ and not overgenerous. The transparency elements of the UK / NI arrangements should be copied. The “transport and accommodation” costs might be excessive given that you can get a very decent two-bed place in Dublin these days for €1200/month. I do not know what the “public representation allowance” is meant to be for? Perhaps that can be cut to zero, given that they have a parliamentary assistant and secretarial allowances.

And then – the biggest issue maybe – the actual salary. It seems to me that it could be e.g. €20,000/pa less. This is a bit casual, I agree, and I look forward to next week’s discussion. But the central point here is that salaries should reflect some sort of market. In the case of e.g. some parts of the medical profession and some academic appointments, Ireland needs to be paying enough so that people – particularly talented people with other options – come to, and stay in, Ireland. In the case of Irish politicians (and indeed many parts of the Irish public service, e.g. the Gardai), we will be getting the same people even if we pay much less. Therefore, in our current situation, we should be paying much less.

@Otto, thank you very much for that contribution. I must say that this was one blogpost where I found myself angry by the time I had finished it, and that wasn’t just from repeat copying and pasting expense, extra payment, allowance from one document to the blogpost or remembering other allowances and perks which don’t feature anyplace, but it was from the initial overarching fact that the country is bankrupt, borrowing extensively to pay for its deficit – for banking costs too, to be sure, but that doesn’t excuse the annual gap between what we’re spending and what we’re taking in – that we’re in an IMF programme and yet we have these rewards on offer for our government. I understand your comment about the outrage, and it can be cynically deployed, but in this case it reflected exactly the views on here on the range and depth of rewards.

Sorry – one more aspect of this issue. IIRC, ministerial pensions and maybe TD pensions too are payable immediately on leaving office / the Dail? So rule requiring that no Dail or ministerial pension payment at all could be made pre the age of 65 might be a good change. This should be retroactive, so as to encourage 58 year old Harney and co to re-enter the work force. If a constitutional amendment is required, I think the people would support it.

@Otto, that’s not correct. The pension and termination payments guide that is issued to TDs is linked to above, but U show it here also. They can get early retirement at a reduced rate from aged 50 as far as I can see, which is still pretty good.

Thanks. From the above re TDs pensions:
“He/she must be 50 years of age to qualify for a full pension and lump sum ― a reduced pension lump sum and pension may be paid at any time between 45 and 49 years of age.
Persons first elected after 1 April 2004 cannot receive a pension or pension lump sum until they reach 65 years of age unless they served in a public service body prior to 1 April 2004 and served as a public servant up to the date of their election or to a date within 26 weeks prior to their election.”

That seems to sort of fix the problem going forward (though I wonder about that public service body caveat). Do former ministers also have to wait until they are 65? If so,I am wondering how Harney (among others) is getting her €130k at age 58. The number appears to be accurate, per:

I notice this too:
The pension entitlements arise from a combination of ministerial and TD pensions. *No contributions* are made by the recipients towards their ministerial pensions but they contribute to their TD pension in line with standard public service arrangements.

So, we are all to tighten our belts! And, as all the politicians say those who have most must carry the heaviest load! What cheats they all are. German MPs get 57K pa, a junior minister here gets more than the Dutch PM and the Norway PM drives himself to work and gets c80K pa and Norway had US$30,000 plus invested for every man, woman and child in its state. Politicans have bankrupted the state with the higher civil and public service.

One thing to be careful of is not to underestimate either the pay or the allowances that MPs etc get in other countries. Re William Taylor’s comment above, it seems that German MPs get €7600/month salary and €3900/month or so unvouched allowances, if this research note is correct. I assure you that is a ducal income for poor-but-sexy Berlin.

I read the article on ministerial pay, and was disgusted with it. The politicians pay should be cut alot in this difficult economic period, and they should lead by example. They should pay for all things and pay the household and water charge, because they are the ones that can afford to. The seanad should be abolished immediately so that would save us money. If they do not do that we should march into the dail, and take it over, like they did in the russian revolution. I can see into the future that things are really going to get very tough for the working person and there will be no money left for basics. The politicians are not living in the real world, but fantasyland as always. I can see nothing but hardship and bloodshed in the future, if things keep going as they are unfortuneately, I don’t like to say it but one can see thousands and thousands of homeless people in the capital and all around the country.

And, William Taylor, if you look at the comparison of UK and Irish income tax rates above, you will see that as far as income taxes are concerned the average earner in Ireland is certainly not “carrying the load” or anything like it, even after several “austerity” budgets. In fact, they are effectively all-but-untaxed and will need to carry much more than they do at the moment.

The 1,500 postage stamps free to politicians explains the fact that last christmas, gone, I recieved two christmas cards from John McGuinness TD for Carlow/Kilkenny. I wonder can I take Mr McGuinness to court for harassing me, since I have never even met him in my life. As well as that I don’t even know him, and I have never had contact with him only by text when he wanted my vote, but I didn’t even vote for him in the last election, yet he thanked me for voting for him. This behaviour warrants an arrest by the guards, and if I was high up, I would take him to court. what drove McGuinness, a prominent politician to send two christmas cards to a very happily married woman, who he does not even know, and he has nothing to do with? It is the third time that it has happened that he has sent me a christmas card, and the next time it happens, I will hand it in his office, and tell him not to send me anymore, otherwise I will bring a court order against him for harrasing a member of the public, he doesn’t even know. Now a second politician local again, wanted me to be a friend of his on facebook, who I have met but don’t even know, and he is not an aquaintance, well the law on facebook is that you have to know the person to make him a friend, and have to abide by facebook laws. Foolishly I accepted his facebook request, at that time not having many facebook friends, but I took the decision this year, of deleting him from my facebook page, because I don’t know him, and I have heard from people in his local area, that he is not widely liked.

“Payments for travel need to be made if you are expecting people to travel …”

Tens of thousands of people in Ireland are travelling long distances to work every day and get no mileage allowance. I would guess most are delighted to have a job. Twelve years ago I made a round trip of over 100 miles every day to travel to a job I then held in a small, Irish-owned company. I was not paid any travel and I was grateful for the opportunity to work in a new area and I hoped it would eventually lead to better things.

Given the national parliament is located in Dublin, it is only sensible to pay some type of allowance for those who have to travel more than 50km but it should be at a rate that covers reasonable expenses (perhaps 30-40c per km max.) or let them claim the cost of renting a house in Dublin. I am personally aware of many families where the main breadwinner works in the UK during the week and only gets to see their families every second or third weekend at most. Of course they get no travel expenses to and from the UK. In another case I know of, a teacher from Co. Clare rents a house in County Dublin with five others while working during the week and then returns to his family at the weekends (sans travelling expenses). This is the reality of modern Ireland.

Keep up the good work. It’s a disgrace that the papers aren’t pursuing this matter (why would RTE, since they are essentially riding the same gravy train?) There is no rational reason why TDs and Ministers in a country of this size with its attendent economic woes should be reeling in salaries and expenses as you have outlined above. It would be interesting to know what public representatives in similar size countries are being rewarded with for their efforts.

@Johnthebean, I think some smaller countries eg Monaco, Luxembourg might have better rewarded politicians. However, and I stand to be corrected on this, there are only two IMF-aided countries in the world with a better rewarded de facto head of state – Mexico (population 113m) and Kenya. And if we compare de jure heads of state, I think Michael D’s notional €310,000 (though probably not his apparent €250,000 actual) is the highest of all IMF-funded countries’ heads of state.

I look forward to seeing the analysis next week, but – forgive me – it’s neither the size of the economy nor whether we are IMF-aided at the moment which is the relevant factor. Rather, it’s what we need to pay to get the right people to do the job. If the salary can be reduced without reducing the quality of the workers, i.e. the current workers will not leave, we should be doing it. NB this is relevant for some elements in the Irish public administration too – there are lots of Assistant Principals / Principals earning vastly more than they would in any alternative employment, and for that matter many €40,000 pa public servants are also paid much more than they would get in other employments. But it is not true in all cases – including many skilled workers in the medical professions and in academia, where hiring often means attracting people to Ireland from abroad.

NWL was correct when pointing out that NAMA’s boss got a very large salary indeed but that this could be justified by the need for a skilled hand in this important job and in light of other salaries the occupant could earn. That is the sort of analysis that needs to be undertaken throughout Irish public spending, not just saying this-is-outragous-when-we-are-IMFed – an argument that would apply to the NAMA chief too.

@Otto Do you really think that people get into politics cos of the wages? If they do then I think it’s really the wrong reason to enter into it. I think that politics has to be one of those ‘passion’ jobs, if you enter into it thinking about pension and mileage allowances then you’re on a hiding to nothin. I think for this reason your argument is actually a bit arse backwards. We have one of the highest paid heads of state in the world and do I really need to remind you of the quality people that that financially attractive position has attracted over the last 30 years? Deeper and deeper into the mire..
I think it makes a lot of sense to pay a lot less for the position, you might get someone who is thinking about the difference between right and wrong instead of thinking about methods of dodging bullets until the retirement funds kick in.
I recognise that some of the people ye have elected are smart and ,maybe even a few of them want to do the right thing but there are very very few of the leaders that actually have dealt with our finances well. http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1018770.shtml
It bemuses me to think that any one thinks an austerity plan can get us back to a ‘surplus’. It’s not just inconceivable, it’s impossible. I’m glad Ireland is not going to be in charge of it’s finances anymore…

I am amazed that having a ‘ lifetime of public service under your belt’ is seen as a good thing. Surely not.
A lifetime in public service should immediately bar people from important jobs. Aren’t Irish public servants at the very core of the country being bankrupt?
Has anything been learned?

Unfortunately the quality and qualifications of TDs is average to poor. I doubt if any TD has created a business or a job ever. Economics used be referred to as political economy and a knowledge of this subject should almost be a pre requisite for our TDs. The quantity of TDs is excessive and the quality inferior. The majority of the current cabinet were in the Dail for the bubble years and never flagged it. Therefore they failed the 95 mark question and should consider apologising and resigning immediately.
David McWilliams in 1999 told Gay Byrne live on the Late Late show that there was a property bubble and was ignored. The rate of pay should reflect the skills needed to be an educated and informed legislator and should be abated by the honour and power of representing your country at the highest level.
Most of the current cabinet presided over the destruction of our economy. Failure should not be rewarded.

There is a way to fix the problem of politican’s pay.It will take about four years or sooner if the coalition falls.Form a new party with aspiring T.D’s agreeing to a flat rate salary and fixed expenses.For example, 90,000 salary and 40,000 expenses, that’s it!!Not a cent more.They, like the rest of us get their pensions at 65.All their salaries and expenses go through Revenue system like the rest of us.They can employ assistants if they wish,even their wives,husbands,partners ,grannies!!,however, they pay them.Teachers,school principals leave their jobs to become T.D’s.thus ensuring that young people get a job teaching.A clean sweep is the only way. Last weekend on RTE’s Saturday Clare Daly’s show former minister Mary Hanafin told us” I never met anybody who went into politics for the money”. There’s only one way to find out!!

The TD’s wages should all be cut down to the bone, in these harsh economic times. I heard on the radio the other day, that the ordinary joe soap, will be expected to retire at age 65, but won’t get their pension until the age of 68, in 2027, so what is that person supposed to live on when he gets to 65, whereas a politician gets his/her pension at 50 years of age. This is ridiculous, and has to be changed and should apply to the politicians too. We should abolish the senate and the high wages of the politicians is the reason we should vote no in the referendum in May.

Interesting data. Do you know if any of the allowances are taxed – unvouched allowances would be taxed in the real world. Also perks such as VHI would open up a BIK tax liability. If they don’t pay tax on these it doubles the value.

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